172 Universities out of 612 are Accredited by NAAC

Every year, Universities in India will get the grades based on overall Performance of the individual universities by National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), New Delhi. Around 612 universities are present in the country, out of which 172 universities are accredited by NAAC.

Out of the 172 universities accredited, 67 have been placed in Grade a, 99 universities in Grade b and only 6 are grade c, based on the scores awarded during the process of accreditation. NAAC follows the process of Grade accreditation only and does not undertake threshold accreditation. The Grade is only a relative value assigned to a university and does not denote an absolute attribute of quality.

This information was given by the Minister of State for Human Resource Development, Dr. Shashi Tharoor.

As of now, accreditations is voluntary for Higher Education Institutions in the country. A legislation namely National Accreditation Regulatory Authority for Higher Educational Institutions Bill, 2012 has been introduced in parliament which proposes to make accreditation mandatory for all Higher Education Institutions.

Quality improvement is a continuous process in Universities and University Grants Commission (UGC) has reported that it has taken several steps to improve quality of universities, which include issuing regulations on maintenance of standards and quality in all universities, including private universities, deemed universities, central universities and state universities.